 Softcover edition | |
| Author | Christopher Alexander |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Architecture |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Publication date | 1964 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 216 |
| ISBN | 0-674-62751-2 |
| OCLC | 16190773 |
| 745.4 | |
| LC Class | NK1505 |
Notes on the Synthesis of Form is a book by Christopher Alexander about the process of design.
Alexander defines design as "the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function...".
Even though his focus was formed in architectural design and civil engineering, the core ideas underlying his approach can be applied to many other fields.
Alexander's anaylsis of the village of Bavra, in Gujarat, India formed the major case study in the dissertation and the book. [1]
By the time it was published, the book was considered "one of the most important contemporary books about the art of design, what it is, and how to go about it." [2]
The book influenced a number of leading software writers, including Larry Constantine, Ed Yourdon, Alan Cooper, and Tom DeMarco. [3]
For some reasons – perhaps related to the mathematical difficulties he faced or to the paradigm shift taking place in the design methods movement through the 1960s and 1970s, or argument by the German designer Horst Rittel that design deals with 'wicked problems' that do not have well defined boundaries or rationales, and cannot be solved with rigid methodology advocated in Notes [4] – Alexander did not continue to develop the formal parts of his approach, which, by that time, showed promise. Instead, he chose, temporarily, to work on patterns ( A Pattern Language ) together with other well-known architects (Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein). These patterns are visible or material manifestations of the driving forces underlying the synthesis of form. For an example, consider the following excerpt from the part one of the book (page 15):
The ultimate object of design is form. The reason that iron filings placed in a magnetic field exhibit a pattern – have form – is that the field they are in is not homogeneous...
Nevertheless, what matters here is not only the form itself but the forces induced by the magnetic field. The fact that the magnetic field induces certain kind of form is relevant for some purposes; however, there are many practical applications not related to form. The equations describing the magnetic field can be translated into many useful outputs, to which, the concept denoted here by term "pattern" is a corresponding material manifestation or articulation. In his most recent work, The Nature of Order , Alexander demonstrates[ citation needed ] that it is illogical to separate formal manifestations from the underlying processes or sequences which produce the form, as both are observable aspects of the same field, thereby resolving the apparent conflict between this work and his subsequent pattern research.
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Christopher Wolfgang John Alexander was an Austrian-born British-American architect and design theorist. He was an emeritus professor at the University of California, Berkeley. His theories about the nature of human-centered design have affected fields beyond architecture, including urban design, software, and sociology. Alexander designed and personally built over 100 buildings, both as an architect and a general contractor.
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" by expressing synergy or emergent behavior.
Electromagnetic or magnetic induction is the production of an electromotive force (emf) across an electrical conductor in a changing magnetic field.
A pattern language is an organized and coherent set of patterns, each of which describes a problem and the core of a solution that can be used in many ways within a specific field of expertise. The term was coined by architect Christopher Alexander and popularized by his 1977 book A Pattern Language.
A virtual particle is a theoretical transient particle that exhibits some of the characteristics of an ordinary particle, while having its existence limited by the uncertainty principle, which allows the virtual particles to spontaneously emerge from vacuum at short time and space ranges. The concept of virtual particles arises in the perturbation theory of quantum field theory (QFT) where interactions between ordinary particles are described in terms of exchanges of virtual particles. A process involving virtual particles can be described by a schematic representation known as a Feynman diagram, in which virtual particles are represented by internal lines.
Product design is the process of creating new products for sale businesses to its customers. It involves the generation and development of ideas through a systematic process that leads to the creation of innovative products. Thus, it is a major aspect of new product development.
The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences. Although philosophers of science and philosophers generally have long been interested in biology, philosophy of biology only emerged as an independent field of philosophy in the 1960s and 1970s, associated with the research of David Hull. Philosophers of science then began paying increasing attention to biology, from the rise of Neodarwinism in the 1930s and 1940s to the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 to more recent advances in genetic engineering. Other key ideas include the reduction of all life processes to biochemical reactions, and the incorporation of psychology into a broader neuroscience.
Difference and Repetition is a 1968 book by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Originally published in France, it was translated into English by Paul Patton in 1994.
Design methods are procedures, techniques, aids, or tools for designing. They offer a number of different kinds of activities that a designer might use within an overall design process. Conventional procedures of design, such as drawing, can be regarded as design methods, but since the 1950s new procedures have been developed that are more usually grouped together under the name of "design methods". What design methods have in common is that they "are attempts to make public the hitherto private thinking of designers; to externalise the design process".
Design thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems.
In software engineering, structured analysis (SA) and structured design (SD) are methods for analyzing business requirements and developing specifications for converting practices into computer programs, hardware configurations, and related manual procedures.
Nikos Angelos Salingaros is a mathematician and polymath known for his work on urban theory, architectural theory, complexity theory, and design philosophy. He has been a close collaborator of the architect Christopher Alexander, with whom Salingaros shares a harsh critical analysis of conventional modern architecture. Like Alexander, Salingaros has proposed an alternative theoretical approach to architecture and urbanism that is more adaptive to human needs and aspirations, and that combines rigorous scientific analysis with deep intuitive experience.
A Theory of Architecture is a book on architecture by Nikos Salingaros, published in 2006 by Umbau-Verlag, Solingen, Germany ISBN 3-937954-07-4. Cover recommendations are by Kenneth G. Masden II, Duncan G. Stroik, Michael Blowhard, and Dean A. Dykstra. Preface by Prince Charles, and Foreword by Kenneth G. Masden II. This book is a re-working of previously published articles used to teach a senior architecture studio class. Four of the twelve chapters were originally written in collaboration, and the co-authors include Michael Mehaffy, Terry Mikiten, Debora Tejada, and Hing-Sing Yu.
Metadesign is an emerging conceptual framework aimed at defining and creating social, economic and technical infrastructures in which new forms of collaborative design can take place. It consists of a series of practical design-related tools for achieving this.
Organizational patterns are inspired in large part by the principles of the software pattern community, that in turn takes it cues from Christopher Alexander's work on patterns of the built world. Organizational patterns also have roots in Kroeber's classic anthropological texts on the patterns that underlie culture and society. They in turn have provided inspiration for the Agile software development movement, and for the creation of parts of Scrum and of Extreme Programming in particular.
Intelligence-based design is the purposeful manipulation of the built-environment to effectively engage humans in an essential manner through complex organized information. Intelligence-Based Theory evidences the conterminous relationship between mind and matter, i.e. the direct neurological evaluations of surface, structure, pattern, texture and form. Intelligence-Based Theory maintains that our sense of well-being is established through neuro-engagement with the physical world at the deepest level common to all people i.e. "Innate Intelligence."
Goethean science concerns the natural philosophy of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Although primarily known as a literary figure, Goethe did research in morphology, anatomy, and optics. He also developed a phenomenological approach to natural history, an alternative to Enlightenment natural science, which is still debated today among scholars.
The Timeless Way of Building is a 1979 book by Christopher Alexander that proposes a new theory of architecture that relies on the understanding and configuration of design patterns. Although it came out later, it is essentially the introduction to A Pattern Language and The Oregon Experiment, providing the philosophical background to the Center for Environmental Structure series.
Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) is a thinking method developed in Israel in the mid-1990s. Derived from Genrich Altshuller's TRIZ engineering discipline, SIT is a practical approach to creativity, innovation and problem solving, which has become a well known methodology for innovation. At the heart of SIT's method is one core idea adopted from Genrich Altshuller's TRIZ which is also known as Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TIPS): that inventive solutions share common patterns. Focusing not on what makes inventive solutions different – but on what they share in common – is core to SIT's approach.
Nanoparticles are classified as having at least one of its dimensions in the range of 1-100 nanometers (nm). The small size of nanoparticles allows them to have unique characteristics which may not be possible on the macro-scale. Self-assembly is the spontaneous organization of smaller subunits to form larger, well-organized patterns. For nanoparticles, this spontaneous assembly is a consequence of interactions between the particles aimed at achieving a thermodynamic equilibrium and reducing the system’s free energy. The thermodynamics definition of self-assembly was introduced by Professor Nicholas A. Kotov. He describes self-assembly as a process where components of the system acquire non-random spatial distribution with respect to each other and the boundaries of the system. This definition allows one to account for mass and energy fluxes taking place in the self-assembly processes.